A new Cato Unbound debate is started here today by Nancy Rosenblum the Chair of the Harvard Department of Government.
Lead essayist Nancy Rosenblum argues that political parties need a “moment of appreciation.” Schemes to minimize, frustrate, or avoid party politics, and replace it with bipartisanship or nonpartisanship all seem founded, to her, on misconceptions that date to the Progressive Era. Among these misconceptions are the ideas that nonpartisan decisionmakers are impartial, well-informed, and above the corrupting influence of politics. Parties, meanwhile, serve many useful functions in politics. They reduce transaction costs to new political entrants (at whatever level). They encourage the formation of political communities, and they act to inform and supply coherent narratives about current events. Further, the need to maintain winning coalitions means that political parties actually foster, rather than impede, political compromises.
To this, I would add that the unforeseen development of parties is one of the few failings of the Founders. On the other hand, it is testimony to their genius that the system they designed successfully accommodated the development of parties.
But once again, the Progressives in their attack on the Constitution have distorted our thinking about parties and partisanship, especially at the local level. Non-partisan, at large elections in off-years were instituted by the Progressives to get partisan, often machine, politics out of local government. Instead, we have local school boards and city governments run by self-interested elites and professional bureaucrats. The advantages of parties that Professor Rosenblum describes in her essay are lost. It is not hard to demonstrate that democracy takes a back seat to elite politics in local government.
